Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, David Livingstone [novels for teenagers .TXT] 📗

Zumbo: they might have burned the marble into lime without going so far as Mozambique. There are about thirty European houses; the rest are native, and of wattle and daub. A wall about ten feet high is intended to inclose the village, but most of the native inhabitants prefer to live on different spots outside. There are about twelve hundred huts in all, which with European households would give a population of about four thousand five hundred souls.

Only a small proportion of these, however, live on the spot; the majority are engaged in agricultural operations in the adjacent country.

Generally there are not more than two thousand people resident, for, compared with what it was, Tete is now a ruin. The number of Portuguese is very small; if we exclude the military, it is under twenty.

Lately, however, one hundred and five soldiers were sent from Portugal to Senna, where in one year twenty-five were cut off by fever.

They were then removed to Tete, and here they enjoy much better health, though, from the abundance of spirits distilled from various plants, wild fruits, and grain, in which pernicious beverage they largely indulge, besides partaking chiefly of unwholesome native food, better health could scarcely have been expected. The natives here understand the method of distillation by means of gun-barrels, and a succession of earthen pots filled with water to keep them cool. The general report of the fever here is that, while at Kilimane the fever is continuous, at Tete a man recovers in about three days. The mildest remedies only are used at first, and, if that period be passed, then the more severe.

The fort of Tete has been the salvation of the Portuguese power in this quarter. It is a small square building, with a thatched apartment for the residence of the troops; and, though there are but few guns, they are in a much better state than those of any fort in the interior of Angola.

The cause of the decadence of the Portuguese power in this region is simply this: In former times, considerable quantities of grain, as wheat, millet, and maize, were exported; also coffee, sugar, oil, and indigo, besides gold-dust and ivory. The cultivation of grain was carried on by means of slaves, of whom the Portuguese possessed a large number. The gold-dust was procured by washing at various points on the north, south, and west of Tete. A merchant took all his slaves with him to the washings, carrying as much calico and other goods as he could muster. On arriving at the washing-place, he made a present to the chief of the value of about a pound sterling.

The slaves were then divided into parties, each headed by a confidential servant, who not only had the supervision of his squad while the washing went on, but bought dust from the inhabitants, and made a weekly return to his master. When several masters united at one spot, it was called a "Bara", and they then erected a temporary church, in which a priest from one of the missions performed mass.

Both chiefs and people were favorable to these visits, because the traders purchased grain for the sustenance of the slaves with the goods they had brought. They continued at this labor until the whole of the goods were expended, and by this means about 130 lbs. of gold were annually produced. Probably more than this was actually obtained, but, as it was an article easily secreted, this alone was submitted to the authorities for taxation.

At present the whole amount of gold obtained annually by the Portuguese is from 8 to 10 lbs. only. When the slave-trade began, it seemed to many of the merchants a more speedy mode of becoming rich to sell off the slaves than to pursue the slow mode of gold-washing and agriculture, and they continued to export them until they had neither hands to labor nor to fight for them. It was just the story of the goose and the golden egg.

The coffee and sugar plantations and gold-washings were abandoned, because the labor had been exported to the Brazils. Many of the Portuguese then followed their slaves, and the government was obliged to pass a law to prevent further emigration, which, had it gone on, would have depopulated the Portuguese possessions altogether.

A clever man of Asiatic (Goa) and Portuguese extraction, called Nyaude, now built a stockade at the confluence of the Luenya and Zambesi; and when the commandant of Tete sent an officer with his company to summon him to his presence, Nyaude asked permission of the officer to dress himself, which being granted, he went into an inner apartment, and the officer ordered his men to pile their arms. A drum of war began to beat a note which is well known to the inhabitants.

Some of the soldiers took the alarm on hearing this note, but the officer, disregarding their warning, was, with his whole party, in a few minutes disarmed and bound hand and foot. The commandant of Tete then armed the whole body of slaves and marched against the stockade of Nyaude, but when they came near to it there was the Luenya still to cross.

As they did not effect this speedily, Nyaude dispatched a strong party under his son Bonga across the river below the stockade, and up the left bank of the Zambesi until they came near to Tete.

They then attacked Tete, which was wholly undefended save by a few soldiers in the fort, plundered and burned the whole town except the house of the commandant and a few others, with the church and fort.

The women and children fled into the church; and it is a remarkable fact that none of the natives of this region will ever attack a church.

Having rendered Tete a ruin, Bonga carried off all the cattle and plunder to his father. News of this having been brought to the army before the stockade, a sudden panic dispersed the whole; and as the fugitives took roundabout ways in their flight, Katolosa, who had hitherto pretended to be friendly with the Portuguese, sent out his men to capture as many of them as they could.

They killed many for the sake of their arms. This is the account which both natives and Portuguese give of the affair.

Another half-caste from Macao, called Kisaka or Choutama, on the opposite bank of the river, likewise rebelled. His father having died, he imagined that he had been bewitched by the Portuguese, and he therefore plundered and burned all the plantations of the rich merchants of Tete on the north bank. As I have before remarked, that bank is the most fertile, and there the Portuguese had their villas and plantations to which they daily retired from Tete. When these were destroyed the Tete people were completely impoverished. An attempt was made to punish this rebel, but it was also unsuccessful, and he has lately been pardoned by the home government. One point in the narrative of this expedition is interesting. They came to a field of sugar-cane so large that 4000 men eating it during two days did not finish the whole.

The Portuguese were thus placed between two enemies, Nyaude on the right bank and Kisaka on the left, and not only so, but Nyaude, having placed his stockade on the point of land on the right banks of both the Luenya and Zambesi, and washed by both these rivers, could prevent intercourse with the sea.

The Luenya rushes into the Zambesi with great force when the latter is low, and, in coming up the Zambesi, boats must cross it and the Luenya separately, even going a little way up that river, so as not to be driven away by its current in the bed of the Zambesi, and dashed on the rock which stands on the opposite shore. In coming up to the Luenya for this purpose, all boats and canoes came close to the stockade to be robbed.

Nyaude kept the Portuguese shut up in their fort at Tete during two years, and they could only get goods sufficient to buy food by sending to Kilimane by an overland route along the north bank of the Zambesi.

The mother country did not in these "Caffre wars" pay the bills, so no one either became rich or blamed the missionaries.

The merchants were unable to engage in trade, and commerce, which the slave-trade had rendered stagnant, was now completely obstructed.

The present commandant of Tete, Major Sicard, having great influence among the natives, from his good character, put a stop to the war more than once by his mere presence on the spot. We heard of him among the Banyai as a man with whom they would never fight, because "he had a good heart." Had I come down to this coast instead of going to Loanda in 1853, I should have come among the belligerents while the war was still raging, and should probably have been cut off.

My present approach was just at the conclusion of the peace; and when the Portuguese authorities here were informed, through the kind offices of Lord Clarendon and Count de Lavradio, that I was expected to come this way, they all declared that such was the existing state of affairs that no European could possibly pass through the tribes. Some natives at last came down the river to Tete and said, alluding to the sextant and artificial horizon, that "the Son of God had come,"

and that he was "able to take the sun down from the heavens and place it under his arm!" Major Sicard then felt sure that this was the man mentioned in Lord Clarendon's dispatch.

On mentioning to the commandant that I had discovered a small seam of coal, he stated that the Portuguese were already aware of nine such seams, and that five of them were on the opposite bank of the river.

As soon as I had recovered from my fatigue I went to examine them.

We proceeded in a boat to the mouth of the Lofubu or Revubu, which is about two miles below Tete, and on the opposite or northern bank.

Ascending this about four miles against a strong current of beautifully clear water, we landed near a small cataract, and walked about two miles through very fertile gardens to the seam, which we found to be in one of the feeders of the Lofubu, called Muatize or Motize. The seam is in the perpendicular bank, and dips into the rivulet, or in a northerly direction.

There is, first of all, a seam 10 inches in diameter, then some shale, below which there is another seam, 58 inches of which are seen, and, as the bottom touches the water of the Muatize, it may be more.

This part of the seam is about 30 yards long. There is then a fault.

About 100 yards higher up the stream black vesicular trap is seen, penetrating in thin veins the clay shale of the country, converting it into porcellanite, and partially crystallizing the coal with which it came into contact. On the right bank of the Lofubu there is another feeder entering that river near its confluence with the Muatize, which is called the Morongozi, in which there is another and still larger bed of coal exposed.

Farther up the Lofubu there are other seams in the rivulets Inyavu and Makare; also several spots in the Maravi country have the coal cropping out.

This has evidently been brought to the surface by volcanic action at a later period than the coal formation.

I also went up the Zambesi, and visited